SDL (possible dim3) Recommendations from Current Users

I'm thinking of making dim3 more cross platform. There's only a couple places I'd need to update to do that. One is using libPNG instead of QT to load PNGS (libPNG really needs some more high level read/write code.)

The other is replacing the AGL code with SDL code. I've looked over the SDL docs, it seems rather straight forward, but I've *heard* (and maybe this has changed or I'm just mistaken) that SDL is a little ... wacky ... on OS X.

SDL does get a little hard to compile on OS X but otherwise, it's fine, I'd say you go ahead and make a Windows version of the engine, animator and the other part and that may make a difference...it's worth a try but, maybe there's an easier way...btw, have you seen Project Infested lately? They're doing great...would be nice to see a Linux version at least

From my experience with it, I never had any troubles getting SDL to compile.

For loading images, instead of using tons of libraries, use SDL_image. It loads (as far as I know; there may be more) PNG, TGA, BMP, TIFF, JPG, and GIF. That should pretty much take care of what I know. Like I said, I may be wrong about a few and there might be some I didn't list. I know it does PNG.

Nick Wrote:From my experience with it, I never had any troubles getting SDL to compile.

It's not about compiling, I'll probably just use the binaries. It's about how well it works in weird edge cases (screen resolutions) and if there's any problems, say, like input is funny, etc, etc.

Nick Wrote:For loading images, instead of using tons of libraries, use SDL_image. It loads (as far as I know; there may be more) PNG, TGA, BMP, TIFF, JPG, and GIF. That should pretty much take care of what I know. Like I said, I may be wrong about a few and there might be some I didn't list. I know it does PNG.

Oh, I didn't know that, that will save me trouble. I also need to save images, but that's only for animator, and all I care to port would be engine.

Let there be one engine where the tools exists only on OS X and not the other way around

I'll ditto Nick, never experienced any problems compiling SDL, only with some of the (often the more obscure) supporting libraries.

SDL behaves a little oddly on OS X because (apparently) there are quite a few OS X patches in the latest/unstable source which haven't yet been rolled into the stable build â€“ fixing bugs like the inverted Y-axis of the mouse in OpenGL windows, fixing the missing menus, fixing OpenGL windows which are minimised in the dock...

I'm pretty Aaron Sullivan submitted some of these fixes when he was developing Snowball? Somebody more knowledgable (or Aaron himself...) can probably confirm...

I always put it in the "Frameworks" directory of the application's bundle... (although how that would help you on Linux or Windows I don't know â€“ sorry, I've never taken advantage of SDL's cross-platform niceties and distributed games for any OS other than OS X â€“ I've only coded for OS X on those systems...)

On windows you can include a few .dll files within the same folder as the binary, holding library data.

What I don't get is why anybody would port dim3 if you won't let them make stuff in the same way as on mac... Doesn't that defeat the point of them wanting to port it? Unless someone makes a really kick ass game that everybody wanted and it got on TV and stuff, I fail to see why anyone would port it.

Good stuff though, good to see that dim3 is going to be more crossplatform.

socksy Wrote:On windows you can include a few .dll files within the same folder as the binary, holding library data.

What I don't get is why anybody would port dim3 if you won't let them make stuff in the same way as on mac... Doesn't that defeat the point of them wanting to port it? Unless someone makes a really kick ass game that everybody wanted and it got on TV and stuff, I fail to see why anyone would port it.

Good stuff though, good to see that dim3 is going to be more crossplatform.

I'd probably talk somebody into it, but the reason (if I did this, it's a large investment of time that might be spent on better things) I'd do it is for the people out there making games. You'll get to sell or give them away to a much larger crowd.

The editors and animator COULD be ported, most of the work will be done through the shared library, but it would be a hard slog as the rest is all interface code. It'd actually be better for somebody to start over in java.